Vanity Fair: “You All Just Got a Lot Richer”

When Donald Trump and the Republican party unveiled its precious tax legislation, outside analysts immediately noted that the bill seemed designed to favor a slim subset of Americans. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, for example, found that almost a third of the plan’s benefits would go to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans in 2018. But the president has repeatedly belied that fact as he’s plugged the policy, even claiming on a call to Senate Democrats that his accountant told him he would “get killed” as a result of the legislation. “The deal is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something,” he added.

But the president, who departed for the gilded halls of the Winter White House Friday night, quickly changed his tune when surrounded by his fellow moneyed elite. According to CBS News, Trump attended a holiday dinner just hours after signing the tax bill into law, where he told friends, “You all just got a lot richer.” (Initiation fees at Mar-a-Lago reportedly ring in at $200,000, and the club’s annual membership fee is $14,000.) Read more